[cogman10]

Increased natural gas usage has been primarily pushed because of the rise renewables.

Natural gas is currently the peaker plant solution to renewables. The fact that more of these plants exist is primarily driven by the fact that larger portions of the grid are being pushed towards renewables.

[jeffreyrogers]

I think it's more because gas is cheap because of fracking. And the timing between the rise in gas use and the rise in renewable deployments is mostly coincidental. If gas were expensive it wouldn't be used. As it is, gas is cheap and has 1/4 the emissions of coal (IIRC).